Cathal BarryThe beatification of Archbishop Oscar Romero has been a long time coming, writes Cathal Barry
It’s been a rocky road to sainthood for the late Archbishop Oscar Romero, gunned down while celebrating Mass on March 24, 1980, in the lead up to El Salvador’s civil war.
However, considering his beatification will occur during the pontificate of the Church’s first Latin American Pope, perhaps it was worth the wait.
After the election of Pope Francis in 2013, Auxiliary Bishop Gregorio Rosa Chavez of San Salvador announced the time was “ripe for a final verdict” on Archbishop Romero’s cause.
“We are in the best of circumstances,” Bishop Rosa Chavez said, referring to Pope Francis, who as Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina, until he was elected Pontiff.
“The stars are aligned (for Romero’s canonisation), but I insist that we should not rush… that time will come,” the bishop added. And it has.
The admiration Pope Francis has for Romero and his conviction that the martyred prelate should be canonised has been well known for some time now.
Msgr Jesus Delgado, former secretary of Archbishop Romero, has spoken of a conversation he had in 2007 with the then Cardinal Bergoglio, who told him that if he were Pope, the beatification and canonisation of the slain archbishop would be the first thing he would pursue.
In another meeting in 2010, Delgado said Bergoglio recalled what he had said about Romero in 2007, but said the problem was that he would never become Pope. Famous last words, it seems.
Wonderful surprise
When Bergoglio was elected Pope, Delgado told local media it was “a wonderful surprise” and that he thought it was time Romero became a saint.
The canonisation process for Romero, a staunch defender of the poor whose criticism of the human rights violations of the military junta that ruled El Salvador beginning in October 1979 led to his assassination, began in 1990.
Ten years after his death, at the anniversary celebrations that took place in San Salvador, Romero’s successor, Archbishop Arturo Rivera Damas, announced that he was going to request permission to open Romero’s cause.
Over the next few years they sought and eventually secured permission from Rome to open the diocesan process and went about interviewing witnesses, collecting testimony and evidence from various key sources.
During the process, however, in November, 1994, Archbishop Rivera died and was replaced by the conservative Archbishop Fernando Sáenz Lacalle, who according to the Chairman of the Archbishop Romero Trust, Julian Filochowski, “took a diametrically opposed view of the Church” from that of Romero.
“People were very frightened by this appointment that this would be the end of the cause,” Mr Filochowski said.
However, when approached by his key staff involved in pursuing Romero’s cause, the new archbishop readily agreed to send it to the Vatican with his own approval and blessing.
This move “was the work of the Holy Spirit”, Mr Filochowski said, “because if it had gone to Rome with the recommendation of Rivera Damas, who was a very liberal bishop then it could have been dismissed”.
Instead, when it arrived in Rome, Mr Filochowski reasoned it “could not be pushed aside as something that had come from a kind of suspect source in any way”.
The documents were formally accepted by Pope John Paul II and the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in 1997, and Romero was given the title of ‘Servant of God’.
In the hands of the Vatican, however, without money or powerful pushers behind it, the cause stalled for some time.
Romero’s postulator, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, who at the time was the Parish Priest of the Church of Santa Maria in Trastevere, had little resources bar the goodwill of the Sant’Egidio community and a number of historians and theologians.
Aside from support of the then Msgr Paglia, Mr Filochowski remains convinced Romero’s cause had gained the full backing of Pope John Paul II, but laments a “large opposition inside the Roman Curia” to the process.
Mr Filochowski said he had hoped in the year 2000 that Romero would have been one of the “millennium saints” that were going to be declared during that jubilee year, “but it was not to be”.
“The opposition was too strong,” Mr Filochowski said, noting the then Pope’s wishes “were being thwarted inside the curia where there was deliberate obstructionism” coming from certain factions.
The decision was eventually taken to have the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, then headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, to investigate Romero’s orthodoxy by examining all of his writings and sermons.
Examination
However, in 2005, the commission that had been set up came to the conclusion that Romero’s orthodoxy checked out.
Still hesitant, an examination of the slain archbishop’s orthopraxis was requested by some senior members of the curia.
“It was a warning” to Cardinal Ratzinger, Mr Filochowski suggested, “that the battle was not over by those who were opposing” Romero.
When Cardinal Ratzinger was elected Pope just few months later in April 2005, many of Romero’s supporters maintained whatever forces were hindering his cause would finally be quashed.
Pope Benedict could not have been clearer when two years later he declared that Romero “merits beatification”.
Despite this, Mr Filochowski recalls, “everything went cold”. “It was as if the cause had gone back into the refrigerator. The cause was still stalled,” he said.
This remained the case until July 2012, when Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller was appointed head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
It is understood that the now Cardinal Müller, a rather conservative theologian, is a close friend of Gustavo Gutiérrez, the Peruvian Dominican priest regarded as the ‘father’ of Liberation Theology, and has a very positive opinion of Romero.
“When he became head of the congregation, although he had a conservative theological outlook, he had an openness to Latin American theology, to liberation theology and to Romero,” Mr Filochowski said.
It is said that before his resignation, Pope Benedict XVI told Archbishop Müller it is now time to move Romero’s cause forward.
While nothing really happened for some time after, because of this particular move, Benedict is widely regarded as having ‘unblocked’, in the technical sense, Romero’s cause.
Then along came Pope Francis, the first Latin American Pope and one, as mentioned above, who was very familiar with Oscar Romero and looked favorably on his cause.
Suddenly, in May 2013, Postulator Archbishop Paglia announced that the Pope had officially “unblocked” Romero’s cause, suggesting that beatification of the assassinated prelate could come swiftly.
The archbishop’s choice of words were also of note.
Mr Filochowski speculated that Romero’s cause “must have been blocked for it to be unblocked”. There was a new energy behind the cause.
A few months later, Cardinal Müller stated that the Vatican’s doctrinal office had given the greenlight to pursue sainthood for Romero and released the cause to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.
And so the cause proceeded through the regular channels and procedures of the Vatican’s so-called ‘saint factory’.
In the meantime, a lot of discussion was going on in the background.
Aboard the papal flight returning from Korea in August 2014, Pope Francis reiterated that there were no more doctrinal problems blocking the process for the slain Salvadoran archbishop.
Francis told journalists that Romero’s case had previously been “blocked out of prudence” by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith but had been “unblocked”.
Francis said of Romero’s cause that “it is important to do it quickly”, but insisted that the investigation must take its course.
He declared that Romero “was a man of God” and suggested that he wanted to expand the Church’s concept of martyrdom to include a broader field of candidates.
“What I would like is that they clarify when there’s a martyrdom for hatred of the Faith – for confessing the Faith – as well as for doing the work for the other that Jesus commands,” Francis said.
Questions
Questions over that distinction had been at the root of the theological dispute over whether Romero was killed by El Salvador’s right-wing death squads for their hatred of the Faith he preached and lived or simply hatred of Romeo’s so-called political action in defence of the poor.
Francis said he would let the appointed commission of theologians decide.
That decision came in January of this year, when the commission ruled that Romero was assassinated as a martyr, unanimously declaring he was killed “in hatred for the Faith”.
This recommendation was in turn accepted by the congregation and Pope Francis’ formal declaration followed on February 3.
The Vatican, however, did not announce the date for the beatification at that time, leading to widespread speculation that Pope Francis himself would travel to El Salvador to beatify Romero, perhaps en route to the US in September.
This turned out not to be, however, and it was announced that Cardinal Angelo Amato, head of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints would carry out the ceremony as is customary.
Finally, in early March, it was announced that the beatification would take place on May 23 in San Salvador, at the city’s Divine Saviour monument.
Speaking after the announcement, Salvadoran President Salvador Sanchez Ceren said the beatification was a miracle for the country, because through Romero’s doctrine and thought, El Salvador is able “to try to unite our country and face the new challenges we have”.
“I don’t doubt that if Monsignor [Romero] were alive, like his work is, he would be leading this quest to unite, to join hands toward tranquility, to bring peace to our families,” he said.
Not to detract from this fantastic occasion, beatification is of course a ceremony for the local Church.
Canonisation, on the other hand, is recognition by the universal Church, the whole Church, and usually takes place in Rome.
Mr Filochowski speculates that this could happen in Romero’s case within two years.
August 15, 2017, marks the centenary of Romero’s birth, which according to Mr Filochowski, would be a “most appropriate” occasion for his canonisation to take place.
“That would then be for the whole Church to celebrate Romero as a bishop who is an inspirational guide for our times.
“This is what we hope and expect the next step will be.”
Mr Filochowski added that the fact Romero’s beatification was finally happening makes it a more meaningful occasion.
“If it had happened back in 1999 when we first pushed for it there wouldn’t have been such a rapturous welcome throughout the Church. People have struggled for this, they have worked for this, they have pressed for this, they have prayed for it. It’s now like a benign virus that has gradually affected the whole Church,” he said.
Whether Oscar Romero’s canonisation will be forthcoming remains to be seen. It’s irrelevant really.
As Bishop Rosa Chavez said, the Salvadorans “named him a saint long ago”.